Bob Wiseman Online

muscle shoals

The film about Muscle Shoals is an amazing layered story but it felt weird when the main man, Rick Hall, explained there was no racism there, nope, never, not one spec. Maybe true but it’s not good enough to hear a white guy asserting this like as if the white people he’s associated with were always cool. Would have been more powerful if Percy Sledge, Aretha Franklin or Wilson Pickett wanted to contribute thoughts about racism or freedom from it.

It’s like the guy in the hamburger store in Toronto at Major and College, October 1982 who started to explain to me how Jews were controlling the Canadian Government and that explains all the problems in Canada… and when he realized a little late that I was Jewish and leaving for the exit he ran for his wallet in the back room returning to show me a Jewish dentist’s business card insisting this was proof he doesn’t hate Jews because that’s his dentist. This was his get-out-of-jail-free-card but it was damage control, it was public relations, as meaningful as Jimmy Fallon criticizing Trump when anyone with a working memory saw how pleased he was to play with Trump’s hair and normalize him for America after everyone knew he was a fascist provocateur .